Even if you weren’t. The economic boom of the 20th century gave birth to lots of prosperous minority communities.
Only problem was that if you ever got too prosperous, neighbors might come by to burn the place down.
But a lot of the so-called economic anxiety kicked off by mass migration to California, Texas, and Florida (and to London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersberg, Beijing, Tokyo, and Mexico City) was the result of war refugees, political dissidents, and victims of a shifting market economy finding real serious economic benefits to relocating inside the fence of one of the world’s premier powers. You didn’t need to be white to achieve a marked improvement in quality of life, you just needed to be within arm’s reach of all the advanced industrial capital and its benefits.
The Two Income Trap that began to rear its head in the 80s/90s was a consequence of housing, higher education debts, and child care costs that prior generations hadn’t historically dealt with. One could plausibly argue that the extended adolescence of college demonstrates an overall improved economy, as people are no longer joining the workforce in their teenage years and trying to outproduce a historically high infant mortality rate.
But the benefits of the economy have gone disproportionately to the leisure and professional managerial classes, while the working classes absorb higher debts/rents and defer accessing the industrial improvements until much later in life. It isn’t that non-white people never see them. It is simply that they are much older when they finally do and enjoy the benefits for less time, due to higher mortality rates.
The two income family came as a direct result of Nixon’s Vietnam spending.
Kennedy’s Vietnam policy was containment; we supplied ‘military advisors’ and propped up the South to appease the French. We were focused on the soviets and Vietnam was a sideshow.
LBJ wanted a massive knock out punch to wipe the Viet Cong out fast. Instead he got a quagmire. Johnson had to print money to pay for the war because he didn’t want to raise taxes. Nixon ran as a ‘peace candidate’ and then doubled down on Johnson’s spending. Remember, we were dropping something like a dozen Hiroshimas a day on jungle.
Inflation is getting bad, and then OPEC hits the US with the Oil Boycott. That devastates the US economy. All those cool loft buildings in places like New York’s TriBeCa and SoHo? Those were originally small factories. They emptied out because the owners couldn’t afford to runt them anymore.
The two income family came as a direct result of Nixon’s Vietnam spending.
That’s more complicated, since the Vietnamese War-Time economy was itself a driver of domestic growth. Stagflation by way of the OPEC crisis didn’t force people into second jobs so much as it put the breaks on 50s/60s era rapid industrial development and the modernization of the consumer economy. Women in the professional workforce was more a novelty of the 1970s and the Feminist wing of the labor movement. And that’s when a woman’s college degree began to matter more, women were able to take on personal debt legally, and birth control allowed women to have sex without getting pregnant (thus ending the Baby Boom era).
Had Nixon not dropped billions onto Vietnam, we’d have spent our petrodollars somewhere else. Military Keynesianism wasn’t the only kind.
All those cool loft buildings in places like New York’s TriBeCa and SoHo? Those were originally small factories. They emptied out because the owners couldn’t afford to runt them anymore.
They emptied out because businesses transitioned manufacturing outside of the major city centers. Mass transportation innovations allowed more and more labor to be moved across state lines. More of the urban economy became sales/marketing, banking, and bulk shipping. Its not like the jobs disappeared. It isn’t even as though these businesses failed. They just migrated closer to the agricultural source material (which - conveniently - was where employers could find cheaper labor).
They emptied out because businesses transitioned manufacturing outside of the major city centers.
The 'transitioned because the price of being in a city was too high. The businesses first moved to the American south where the Unions were weaker, and then overseas. I live in New York and you still hear stories about how fast it happened. “SoHo” was a name dreamed up by the artists who started moving into the empty factories. All the folks who’d been priced out of Greenwich Village started moving in.
Also, Vietnam didn’t ‘grow’ the economy. It was more like steroids. The old steel mills that should have been renovated years before were now running 24/7 to make enough bombs.
When the US mills couldn’t produce enough for the Germans and Japanese markets, those countries started building their own plants. These new plants used way less oil than the older American plants, so when the Oil Crisis hit German and Japanese cars became a much better bargain.
If Nixon hadn’t been pumping money into the steel industry it might have transitioned to lower cost plants on its own.
Well, large parts of the US had literal apartheid, concentration camps and what amounted to slavery of black people well into middle of the 20th century. So some were definitely automatically exempt from that prosperity from the moment they were born on account of their skin colour.
It is true, this post is true only for mostly white for people in the imperial core.
My parents grew up with a literal open sewer on their block where they would dump their shit in then the city would “flush” it with a pass of water then send down the water they would collect for drinking. They had to boil it first. This was in the 50s.
If you were white*
Yuuge detail
Even if you weren’t. The economic boom of the 20th century gave birth to lots of prosperous minority communities.
Only problem was that if you ever got too prosperous, neighbors might come by to burn the place down.
But a lot of the so-called economic anxiety kicked off by mass migration to California, Texas, and Florida (and to London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersberg, Beijing, Tokyo, and Mexico City) was the result of war refugees, political dissidents, and victims of a shifting market economy finding real serious economic benefits to relocating inside the fence of one of the world’s premier powers. You didn’t need to be white to achieve a marked improvement in quality of life, you just needed to be within arm’s reach of all the advanced industrial capital and its benefits.
The Two Income Trap that began to rear its head in the 80s/90s was a consequence of housing, higher education debts, and child care costs that prior generations hadn’t historically dealt with. One could plausibly argue that the extended adolescence of college demonstrates an overall improved economy, as people are no longer joining the workforce in their teenage years and trying to outproduce a historically high infant mortality rate.
But the benefits of the economy have gone disproportionately to the leisure and professional managerial classes, while the working classes absorb higher debts/rents and defer accessing the industrial improvements until much later in life. It isn’t that non-white people never see them. It is simply that they are much older when they finally do and enjoy the benefits for less time, due to higher mortality rates.
The two income family came as a direct result of Nixon’s Vietnam spending.
Kennedy’s Vietnam policy was containment; we supplied ‘military advisors’ and propped up the South to appease the French. We were focused on the soviets and Vietnam was a sideshow.
LBJ wanted a massive knock out punch to wipe the Viet Cong out fast. Instead he got a quagmire. Johnson had to print money to pay for the war because he didn’t want to raise taxes. Nixon ran as a ‘peace candidate’ and then doubled down on Johnson’s spending. Remember, we were dropping something like a dozen Hiroshimas a day on jungle.
Inflation is getting bad, and then OPEC hits the US with the Oil Boycott. That devastates the US economy. All those cool loft buildings in places like New York’s TriBeCa and SoHo? Those were originally small factories. They emptied out because the owners couldn’t afford to runt them anymore.
That’s more complicated, since the Vietnamese War-Time economy was itself a driver of domestic growth. Stagflation by way of the OPEC crisis didn’t force people into second jobs so much as it put the breaks on 50s/60s era rapid industrial development and the modernization of the consumer economy. Women in the professional workforce was more a novelty of the 1970s and the Feminist wing of the labor movement. And that’s when a woman’s college degree began to matter more, women were able to take on personal debt legally, and birth control allowed women to have sex without getting pregnant (thus ending the Baby Boom era).
Had Nixon not dropped billions onto Vietnam, we’d have spent our petrodollars somewhere else. Military Keynesianism wasn’t the only kind.
They emptied out because businesses transitioned manufacturing outside of the major city centers. Mass transportation innovations allowed more and more labor to be moved across state lines. More of the urban economy became sales/marketing, banking, and bulk shipping. Its not like the jobs disappeared. It isn’t even as though these businesses failed. They just migrated closer to the agricultural source material (which - conveniently - was where employers could find cheaper labor).
They emptied out because businesses transitioned manufacturing outside of the major city centers.
The 'transitioned because the price of being in a city was too high. The businesses first moved to the American south where the Unions were weaker, and then overseas. I live in New York and you still hear stories about how fast it happened. “SoHo” was a name dreamed up by the artists who started moving into the empty factories. All the folks who’d been priced out of Greenwich Village started moving in.
Also, Vietnam didn’t ‘grow’ the economy. It was more like steroids. The old steel mills that should have been renovated years before were now running 24/7 to make enough bombs.
When the US mills couldn’t produce enough for the Germans and Japanese markets, those countries started building their own plants. These new plants used way less oil than the older American plants, so when the Oil Crisis hit German and Japanese cars became a much better bargain.
If Nixon hadn’t been pumping money into the steel industry it might have transitioned to lower cost plants on its own.
Well, large parts of the US had literal apartheid, concentration camps and what amounted to slavery of black people well into middle of the 20th century. So some were definitely automatically exempt from that prosperity from the moment they were born on account of their skin colour.
It is true, this post is true only for mostly white for people in the imperial core.
My parents grew up with a literal open sewer on their block where they would dump their shit in then the city would “flush” it with a pass of water then send down the water they would collect for drinking. They had to boil it first. This was in the 50s.
This is why the GOP hates Unions.
There were plenty of non-white people who got good jobs through Unions.
The poor would like a word…
Everyone who remembers was!